DEADLIFT
Lovecraft In An Elevator
Here's a free adventure for Call Of Cthulhu. My payment is making you read those two puns.
The entire adventure takes place in an elevator where the investigators are stuck in a groundhog day style looping timeline until they figure out how to escape it.
On a rainy Saturday afternoon June 15th 2024, you are taking an elevator down in 105 Croshaw Tower, a skyscraper built in Manhattan in the 1980s.
Croshaw Tower's 94 levels includes office spaces, shopping malls, residential levels and entertainment arcades. It was state of the art in the 80s, now 40 years on, the glory has faded somewhat.
PLAYER CHARACTERS
Feel free to make these characters your own. Everything about their backgrounds and backstory are suggestions, feel free to overwrite them. There are some changes to each linked character sheet, mentioned below.
Travis Maldonaldo
30 year old Taxi Driver, born and raised in New York. Travis has been taking on Craigslist ads to assist in rituals for cash. His most recent ritual involved someone taking his blood in a copper bowl for $500. Travis is at Croshaw Tower to renew his taxi medallion.
Equipment
Credit-card style multi-tool
Penknife
Mobile phone (no signal)
Taxi receipt book
Skills
Set Brawl to 50%
Maxine Miller
18 year old archeology student, born in Bangladesh and raised in Ohio. Visiting her grandfather's office at Croshaw tower. Last year Maxine was on an archaelogical excursion to Oman, and she discovered a strange tablet in the ruins that gave her visions of glowing multicoloured globules in outer space.
Equipment
Notebook
Mobile phone (no signal)
Skills
Replace Language (French) with Language(Sumerian) at 25%
Set History to 50%
Set Occult to 25%
Set Cthulhu Mythos to 5%
Damien Savary
29 year old doctor. Born in Colorado, moved to New York two years ago. While at medical school, Damien participated in an occult ritual which gifted him with perfect scores on all of his exams. Damien swore off occultism when he started seeing the runes of the ritual inscribed in the organs of cadavers that we practising on. Damien is at Croshaw tower to play some digital golf on the arcade floors.
Equipment
Fancy watch
Fountain pen
Mobile phone (no signal)
Skills
Set Language (Latin) to 25%
Set Occult to 25%
Alternatively, have the players generate a random investigator here. One of the investigators should be in a medical field, another should have some fighting skill, and one must be considerably younger than the other two. If the any player feels their skills aren't as good as the other two players, boost their luck to 90
====KEEPERS ONLY PAST THIS POINT====
The investigators, and NPC's with them, have been trapped in the lift since 3pm, when the display panel went blank (at floor 70), the buttons became nonresponsive, and all phones lost signal.
THE ELEVATOR
The lift is on the larger side, 30 square feet, with mirrors on both side walls, a poster advertisment on the right wall, an emergency access hatch in the roof and faded dark blue carpet underneath. In addition to the investigators, there are 4 NPCs in the lift with them.
Hidden beneath the carpet of the lift, a magic circle has been scratched into the metal floor. There are various notes that the investigators left for themselves in previous iterations of the loop, hidden in the elevator and on their persons.
The control panel has been buckled inward and damaged, requiring a mechanical repair (hard) or strength check (extreme) to open. Hidden on the interior of the control panel, someone has scratched an arrow pointing upwards.
Investigators can attempt a hard electrical repair roll to restore some functionality to the lift. Regardless of whether they succeed or fail, they will find hidden amongst the wiring of the internal components, a note written in Travis' handwriting:
"DON'T GET OFF ON FLOOR 68"
If the investigators succeed on their electrical repair roll, the floor indicator will show floor 81, and they can send the lift up or down.
If both mirrors are intact, their reflections form an infinite tunnel of elevator rooms, slowly fading into green tinged darkness.
NPC's
ELVIS - mid 30s, SEO salesman, Strong, Claustrophobic, Arrogant
Elvis is doing his best to not fully panic after the lift malfunctioned. He manages to keep it together until 4:18pm, when he goes into a rage and smashes the non-responsive control panel and one of the wall mirrors, after which he will go semi-catatonic. Elvis was here for an important meeting at 4.30pm.
Elvis is brash and arrogant, and very proud of his taekwondo brown belt.
KARIM - late teens, student, uninterested
Karim has his hoodie up, headphones on, head down and buried in his phone. He is largely uninterested in speaking with anyone else or attempting escape, saying "we just have to sit tight". If he's asked what he's listening to, he will mutter "hyperpop" and if asked what he's looking at on his phone, he will say "a book". Karim was here to play games at the arcade.
FLOSSIE - Late 70s/Early 80s, retired nurse
Flossie has an apartment here, bought by herself and her late doctor husband. Flossie is not coping too well with the extended wait and is sitting in the corner of the lift
Flossie actually remembers being trapped on the lift before with her husband in the 80s. Her memory is hazy, but she remembers eventually she got out. She vaguely remembers sharing the lift with an Olympic fencer, a toddler, her husband, and an old man.
LEA - Early 20s, artist/ store clerk
Lea has taken it upon herself to look after Flossie, protecting her from Elvis' outbursts and any strange behaviour the investigators might show. Lea has a .44 magnum concealed in her handbag, but will not draw and use it unless she thinks that herself or anyone's else's life is in danger.
WHAT'S GOING ON?
Karim is actually an ancient and powerful sorcerer (although he cannot remember that now) and the investigators were planned to be his sacrifices in an immortality ritual to Yog-Sothoth. However, the ritual went wrong when there was a catastrophic elevator failure, killing Karim and forcing the timeline to reset to the start of the ritual.
When the timeline reset, the investigators (his sacrifices) retained their memories and ended up rebelling and messing up the ritual further, eventually damaging the magic circle and causing Karim and everyone else to lose their memories (in a pop-culture science form of amnesia, where they retain general knowledge but not specifics).
The lift and all of its occupants has been transported to the realm/body
of Yog-Sothoth, cut loose from the flow of time and the logic of cause
and effect.
Karim at-Tawil was a powerful alchemist and sorcerer, who rose to fame in the second crusade for his quest for eternal life (successful history check once investigators have seen Karim's phone). In 1147, he wrote a letter to a colleague bragging he had discovered the key and the gate, and seemingly vanished from history (hard history check).
The mirrors of the elevator (if both intact) act as portals to alternate dimensions (successful occult check after investigating the mirrors), all mixed together in the timeless body of Yog-Sothoth. Doppelgangers will start to climb through the mirrors and attack the investigators as more loops are completed.
If an investigator decides to travel through a mirror, or a doppelganger comes through a mirror into the lift, the NPCs' (including Karim) eyes roll into the back of their heads and they become fully nonresponsive, just standing there, mouthing "HE IS THE KEY, HE IS THE GATE" repeatedly like a mantra.
If an investigator decides to travel to the very end of the infinite tunnel of alternate dimensions, sinking into featureless dark green murk, they can briefly see Yog-Sothoth, before they are disintegrated by the lack of causality.
If an investigator opens the lift access hatch (extreme strength check or regular mechanical repairs check) they will find themselves on top of a lift hanging in what appears to be an infinite chasm. Millions of elevators spread in either direction, their cables vanishing into a blue fog that blankets both above and below. A version of Maxine's notebook is sitting on the roof of the elevator. Every page is filled with "I AM THE KEY I AM THE GATE" repeated ad nauseum.
DOPPELGANGERS
If an investigator is paying close attention to the mirrors, or with a successful spot hidden check, they will notice one of their reflections is not perfectly mirroring them. If they continue to study the reflections, they will catch the reflection glancing at them every so often to see if they're paying attention.
Give the players some time to stew before the doppelgangers escalate. In the next natural lull, call for another spot hidden check. If any of the investigators succeed, they spot one of their reflections climbing from a further elevator to a closer one. The rest of the doppelgangers will continue to act as a perfect mirror, but with one extra person in that particular elevator reflection.
If the investigators make it clear that they have spotted a doppelganger, the doppelganger will speed up, running through the reflected elevator rooms and leaping into the "real" elevator. They then may:
1) Attempt to kill Karim (resetting the loop)
2) Attempt to push their counterpart through the mirror
3) Try to kill first Travis, then Damien, then Maxine, in that specific order. If they succeed, the scenario is over.
The first attack will be a solitary doppelganger. Each following attack will include one more doppelganger (meaning there will be multiples of the same person attacking later on, e.g two Travises, one Maxine and one Damien)
Use the investigator sheets for the doppelganger's stats.
KARIM'S PHONE
Your players may become suspicious that Karim is obsessed with his phone, despite nobody having signal. If they get their hands on the phone, they can discover the following information:
The phone appears to be factory-reset, with no apps, contacts, or anything to differentiate it from a brand new phone, except for:
1) Media File:
Karim is not listening to Hyperpop. He is listening to a recording of an old hoarse man chanting in a foreign language. Successful language (Sumerian) check will reveal it is "The Ritual of Crystal Lights" and implores a being called Yog-Sothoth to open the gate and show the key. "Accept three gifts and allow me into thy kingdom"
Without knowledge of Sumerian, the investigators will still pick up "Yog-Sothoth" as it is repeated many times.
If the investigators stop the media player (the file is playing on repeat) Karim will scream and age 80 years in 2 minutes, dying of old age and resetting the loop.
2) Text Files
Karim is reading a book. It's his spellbook, written in Latin, and uploaded to PDF. A successful language (Latin) check will allow the investigators to spend some time studying it.
10 minutes spent studying:
The book details construction techniques for a bizarre contraption, including diagrams for a magic circle. A successful mechanical repair check will reveal that the end result will be a small wooden platform that can raise or lower about 5 feet in height.
20 minutes spent studying:
The investigators will learn the name Ritual of Crystal Lights, and discover it grants eternal youth
30 minutes spent studying:
The investigators discover the nature of the ritual and the correct order of sacrifice
40 minutes spent studying:
Sanity check. If the investigator fails, 1D6 SAN loss, with the same D6 result gained in Cthulhu Mythos. The Investigator also learns a spell (rolled randomly)
3) Voicemail
The phone has thousands of missed calls, with corresponding voicemail messages. All of the missed calls are from a contact called "Me", the only contact on the phone. If the investigators listen to the voicemails, they will hear the voice of an old man, shouting as if very far away from the phone. Example voicemails include:
"You've forgotten who you are!"
"You have to kill them in the right order!"
"Kill the taxi driver first!"
"Kill the man with the fancy watch second!"
"Kill the girl last!"
"You are the gate!"
"They are the key!"
If the investigators draw Karim's attention to these messages, he will claim not to have noticed them.
If Karim listens to them, he will regain some of his memories and magical powers, and promptly finish the ritual (end of scenario).
THE RITUAL OF CRYSTAL LIGHTS
Supplicant
and sacrifices must be within the 6th sacred circle, and ascending. In
ancient times, this involved a laborious process of building a ritual
elevator platform. The invention of commercial elevators has made this
substantially easier for Karim.
Once the sacred words have been spoken, and while the chant continues, the supplicant is magically de-aged by the sum of the sacrifices' ages, but to finalise the ritual, the sacrifices must be killed in a specific order:
1) The Warrior
2) The Healer
3) The Youth.
Anyone with fighting experience or skill qualifies as a warrior.
Anyone in the medical field or with medical experience qualifies as a healer.
Anyone 10 years younger than the other 2 sacrifices qualifies as a youth.
If the supplicant is killed before the ritual is completed, the time stream resets to earlier in the ritual.
Once
the youth dies, the ritual is complete and anyone in the magic circle
is returned to the normal stream of time. The supplicant can now also
die again.
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
If your players think of another solution that makes sense, let it work. Here are a few ways to escape the loop:
1) Elvis, Fossy and Lea can be substituted as sacrifices
2) Karim can be a substitute for any of the sacrifices.
3) If the investigators break into an alternate dimension, and kill their doppelgangers in the correct ritual order, they can finish the ritual and escape the elevator (in a new alternate reality).
THE MAGIC CIRCLE
If the investigators pull up the carpet, they will discover a magic circle scratched into the metal floor below. If they tamper with it, they destabilise the ritual further, with the following possible effects:
1) They find themselves still trapped in the loop, but it is now the 90s. The elevator reeks of cigarette smoke. Karim now has a walkman + a notebook. Everyone except Elvis no longer has a mobile phone. Everyone is the same age, name, etc, its just as if this scenario has always been set in the 90s.
2) Globules of coloured light start to appear, growing into existence before shrinking into nothingness again. Eventually the elevator itself fades away, leaving them floating in the void of space. Roll Sanity or lose 1d6 SAN, before resetting the loop at loop one
3) Karim screams, and ages 80 years in 2 minutes. He dies of old age and the loop resets.
SENDING THE ELEVATOR DOWN
While this seems like the easiest way to escape, it goes against the flow of the ritual and will lead to he death of everyone in the lift, resetting the loop, when the elevator reaches floor 50.
On the way down though, the elevator will ding, and stop and open on Floor 68.
FLOOR 68
The elevator doors open on a busy arcade, with people playing at various games, laughing and having a good time.
The NPCs will attempt to get off here, and it will take an extreme success at persuasion, intimidation etc to stop them.
If the investigators stay on the lift they will see every person in the arcade turn to look at them as the doors close.
If the investigators get off the lift, they will notice pretty quickly that every person in the arcade is attached to the floor. They have no feet, their legs simply melding smoothly with the floor. These people also seem to be incapable of true speech, and will simply make laughing noises, or shout random phrases that you would expect to hear in an arcade ("high score!" "No way you cheated!" "I wonder how many tickets to win the Nintendo?" etc) If they are cut into, the investigators will discover they have no internal organs, and appear to be made entirely of a strange purple muscle.
None of the arcade machines do more than flash brightly coloured lights.
Floor 68 is an extra-dimensional parasite of Yog-Sothoth and ambush predator, catching unwary mortals. Once captured, it feeds on its victims' timelines, trapping them in the false arcade until they die of old age.
If the investigators die this way, they take an extra 1d6 of SAN loss (no save) and the loop resets.
If Karim got off on Floor 68, have the investigators travel further down in the lift, to floor 50, before resetting the loop.
If the investigators send the lift up, they are playing into the ritual, and can stave off death for a little longer.
The floor numbers will continue to rise. Past floor 94, strange things start happening.
1) The elevator dings and the doors open on floor 101, which is apparently a small brooklyn apartment in the 1990s. Travis will recognise this as his childhood home. A baby can be heard crying in the next room.
2) On floor 122, the elevator doors will open on a college dorm room. A younger Damien has his back to the doors, pouring over an occult grimoire.
3) On floor 166, the elevator doors open on the side of a mountain. Investigators can see Maxine, manically laughing, as she rubs blood on her face in front of a weathered obelisk. Maxine recognises this as the site of her archeological expedition to the Middle East, but has no memory of this occuring.
4) On floor 193, the elevator doors open on a young couple dancing at their wedding in a large hall. It looks to be the 70's. This is Flossie and her late husband.
5) On floor 219, the elevator doors open onto desert. An old man in a black robe stands on a strange primitive elevator platform, with 2 men and 1 child chained to him. This is Karim in 1147 AD
6) On floor 342, the elevator doors open onto blasted, empty desert. The sun hangs impossibly huge and red in the sky. It is 5 billion years in the future, and our sun has gone Red Giant
7) The floor indicator simple shows the infinity symbol, and the doors open on the vast blackness of space. Globules of multicoloured light grow and shrink in the void.
NOTES
The investigators have left notes to themselves. If the players search their pockets, they will find notes from their past selves. If they decide to leave a note, they will find one already there. Here are some example notes below. If a place for them is not specified, they can be found anywhere the investigators think to look
1) DON'T GET OFF ON FLOOR 68 - Travis' handwriting, wedged in elevator wiring
2) THAT IS NOT A BOY - Damien's handwriting
3) WATCH THE MIRRORS - Maxine's handwriting
4) GET HIS PHONE- Travis' handwriting
3) YOUR CAPTOR IS ALSO IMPRISONED - Maxine's handwriting
4) YOU'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE - scratched into the wall behind the mirror on the left wall
5) HE CANNOT REMEMBER HIS CRIMES - Travis' handwriting
6) WE ARE THE KEY - Maxine's handwriting
7) WE ARE THE GATE - Damien's handwriting
8) KILL ELVIS - Damien's handwriting
LOOP ONE
You come to, standing in a large elevator. It is 4:38 PM. Directly in front of you, you can see that the elevator control panel has been smashed in, the metal slightly buckled inward. The screen that indicates your current floor is blank. To your right, the wall is covered with a shattered mirror. To your left, there is another mirror taking up half the wall, with the back half being covered with an advert for Starbucks' latest offering of summer drinks, proudly displaying the Mango Fandango. Behind you, in addition to the other investigators, you can see the elevator has four other occupants. There is a big man in a cream coloured suit, panting and nursing a badly bruised and bloody hand. There is an old lady, sitting on the floor, with a younger woman in her thirties or forties standing next to her with her hand in her purse. There is also a teenager, hoodie up, headphones on, face buried in his phone.
The lights cut out, you feel a brief moment of weightlessness in the dark, and then you die.
All investigators make a sanity roll. Failure causes 1d6 SAN loss. Success causes 1 point of SAN loss
Whenever Karim dies, the loop resets, 10 minutes further into the past. Whenever the investigators die, they must make a sanity roll, losing 1d6 SAN on failures the first three times, 1d4 the next three after that, and 1d3 after that. Turns out you can get used to dying.
LOOP TWO
You come to, standing in an elevator. It is 4:28 PM. Someone is screaming and bellowing out a string of swearwords. Directly in front of you, you can see that the elevator control panel has been smashed in, the , the metal slightly buckled inward. The screen that indicates your current floor is blank. To your right, there is a crashing noise as the man in the cream suit punches the mirror with all his might. The old lady is cowering in the corner, with the younger woman standing protectively in front of her, with her hand in her purse. The teenager has moved to the opposite wall but seems otherwise oblivious to the man's outburst.
The investigators now have 10 minutes before they die again.
LOOP THREE
4:18 PM. At this point the investigators have a chance to prevent Elvis from melting down and damaging the Elevator control panel and smashing the mirror. If they successfully prevent him from buckling the control panel, it can be easily opened with Travis' Multitool, no roll needed. If they prevent the mirror from being smashed, they open up the possibility of dimensional travel, and open themselves up to doppelganger attack.
LOOPS FOUR TO TEN
From this point on, with each death, move the time back 10 minutes, and ratchet up the threat from the doppelgangers slightly.
at the 3:08 mark (loop 10) the doppelgangers will attack en masse (4 doppelgangers per investigator), strictly killing the investigators in the ritual order. This time the investigators don't wake up.
